Previously in our retelling of the events of the First Age of Middle Earth, we detailed
the ultimate culmination of the tale of Húrin Thalion following the destruction of his family
due to the Dark Lord’s malicious machinations. The consequences of the curse of Morgoth were not at
their end, and the realm of Doriath, which had long stood in defiance of the Lord of Angband,
was to feel the combined wrath of the curse of Morgoth and the Oath of Feanor.
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Húrin’s final gift to the kingdom, which had fostered his family during his imprisonment in
Angband, was that of the treasure horde Glaurung had amassed in the aftermath of the destruction of
Nargothrond. Foremost among these treasures was the golden necklace the Dwarves made for Finrod
– Nauglamír. It quickly became the second most important item within the halls of Menegroth,
with only the Silmaril of Beren and Luthíen proving more valued. The hoard had been cursed
by Mim the petty dwarf, before his murder at the hands of Húrin, and as such, it invoked
in one of the noblest of the race of Elves in the First Age, great greed and longing. King Thingol,
enthralled by the astonishing beauty of this jewellery item, looked to its original creators
to conduct the works he had come to envision. The Dwarven convoys often passed through his
kingdom. Unfortunately, the most recent convoy of Dwarves from the city of Nogrod had among their
number great master smiths. Upon their arrival within the Girdle of Melian, the king instructed
the Dwarven smiths to set as the centrepiece of the Nauglamír, the jewel of Feanor – the Silmaril.
This required the reworking of the item itself, and such work was difficult and
dangerous. The process eventually brought out the natural greed of the Dwarven smiths, who,
as they looked upon the work of their forebears in conjunction with the great
jewel recovered by Beren and Luthien, began to lust over the soon to be reforged Nauglamír.
During the painstaking process, Thingol sat in silence among the smithies of Menegroth,
increasingly affected by the hoard’s curse and allowed no other elf to witness the works of the
dwarves. In time, the work was completed, and the reforged Nauglamír’s beauty became incomparable
in its splendour. Upon its completion, the king of Doriath stepped forward to claim for himself
the finest accomplishment of his reign. The dwarves, however, refused the king the item
they had been forging, presuming that it rightly belonged to Dúrin’s folk as the original creators
of the Nauglamír. Thingol would not accept this, believing it to be nought more than a
ruse by the Dwarves to claim for themselves the Silmaril, which had been won at a great cost
by the valiant efforts of the man Beren and Elf Luthien. His words were full of outrage:
“How do ye of uncouth race dare to demand aught of me, Elu Thingol, Lord of Beleriand, whose life
began by the waters of Cuivénen years uncounted ere the fathers of the stunted people awoke?”
Thingol stood amongst them proud and tall, yet this pride would prove to be the undoing of his
reign and kingdom, for his comments had stoked the embers of Dwarven lust into a full-blown rage.
So it was that noble King Thingol was slain by the Dwarven smiths within the very darkest depths
of Menegroth. His last sight before he passed on was the Silmaril, now prominently displayed
within the Nauglamír. The Dwarven companies of those days were well armed and armoured,
yet deep within Doriath, they were left with no choice but to flee eastwards.
However, the Elves, enraged by the murder of their king, would not allow such a crime to be
left unavenged and hunted the dwarves slaying them at will, until the Nauglamír had been recovered
and returned to the heartbroken Queen Melian. Unfortunately for the denizens of Doriath, two of
the Dwarves who had participated in the murder of Thingol had survived the pursuit and made
their way to Nogrod. Here they detailed what they deemed to be an affront to their people, and the
leaders of the city lamented the death of their smiths to such an extent that they were driven
to rage. Thoughts of vengeance were brought to the forefront of their minds, and although the sister
city of Belegost refused them aid and counselled against violence, the die had already been cast.
A great host emerged from the city and headed with all haste westwards over Gelion towards Doriath.
The death of her beloved husband Thingol had also impacted Melian so drastically that the girdle
that had long kept the kingdom safe failed. Melian spoke only to marchwarden Mablung and bade him to
seek out Beren and Lúthien, before she finally passed across the Westward Sea, returning to the
land of the Valar. In the absence of Melian, the leaderless Elves of Doriath were left unprepared
as the Naugrim, as the Elves called the Dwarves, crossed over the Aros and fell upon their hated
foes. The ferocity and anger of the Dwarves of Nogrod were such that they swept aside
the purposeless and despairing Grey Elves with ease. Before long, the Dwarves crossed the great
bridge and made their way to Menegroth, where the battle of the Thousand Caves was to ensue.
A great many Elves and Dwarves were slain in this battle, foremost among them Mablung,
who was laid low before the very doors of the Treasury, which housed the Nauglamír.
With the death of the foremost captain of Doriath, Menegroth was then sacked
with wild abandon and the Nauglamír with its Silmaril was taken by the Naugrim.
Word of the sack soon reached Beren and Luthien, who now dwelt upon the Green Isle of Tol Galen
alongside their son Dior Eluchíl. Upon hearing of the fall of Menegroth, Beren, with his son in tow,
headed North to the River Ascar, accompanied by a great number of the Green Elves of Ossiriand.
This company proceeded to ambush the returning Dwarves in what came to be known as the Battle
of Sarn Athrad. The Dwarves, laden with the spoils of war, began their ascent of the Gelion,
only to be met with the blaring of Elven warhorns and innumerable arrows feathering the convoy.
A vast number of the Dwarves were slain in the early onslaught, with only a scant
few escaping toward Mount Dolmed. However, they would find no respite upon its slopes,
as the shepherds of the forest, the Ents, came against them with force, once more driving the
host towards the woods of Ered Lindon. From here, none of the Naugrim would ever emerge,
as the great sack of Menegroth was avenged, and the Nauglamír with its Silmaril recovered.
Beren recovered this trinket in what was to be his last battle, for he was the one who slew the very
Lord of Nogrod and reclaimed the Nauglamír. However, with his final breath, the dying
Dwarf laid a further curse upon the cause of the conflict, which Beren did not heed, it would seem.
Following the battle, Dior Elúchil bade farewell to his parents, and with his wife Nimloth and
their children Eluréd, Elurín and Elwing moved to Doriath, taking up the throne of his grandfather.
The successor of Thingol would proceed to uplift his downtrodden people and restore
the Halls of Menegroth and the might of Doriath. However, this was not to last.
For with the dying days of Summer on a brisk Autumn night, a messenger came
and knocked upon the doors of the great hall in Menegroth, demanding an audience with King Dior.
The messenger revealed himself to be one of the Lords of the Green Elves, who had made
with all haste from Ossiriand, which provided a clue into the dire nature of the news to come.
The door wards admitted him to the great hall where the king sat alone, and, unwilling to
break the deafening silence, the Green Lord handed a coffer to Díor and left wordlessly.
Within the coffer lay the Nauglamír which had graced the visage of Lúthien up until this point,
which broke the king’s heart. Therefore upon opening the coffer, Dior was made aware that
Beren Erchamion and Lúthien Tinúviel had died their second and final death,
leaving Arda to go to a fate known only by the race of man beyond this world.
In his unknowable grief, the young king gazed long and hard upon the Silmaril.
This mighty jewel represented for his people the triumph of hope over despair,
through the ceaseless efforts of Beren and Lúthien to overcome the terror wrought by Morgoth.
In the years since it has been theorized and accepted among the wisest of Middle Earth,
the Silmaril hastened their end. As the flame and beauty embodied by Lúthien when she wore
the Nauglamír were such that it should not have existed in mortal lands, its brightness,
in the end, bringing a final darkened day to the tale of Beren Erchamion and Lúthien Tinúviel.
Unaware of this fact, Dior repeated his parents’ mistake and clasped upon his neck the Nauglamír.
In doing so, he became the fairest of all the children of the world he inhabited, with none of
the Edain, the Eldar or the Maiar of the Blessed Realm capable of matching his majesty and grace.
However, this was not the end of the misfortune which would befall Dior Eluchíl and his people,
for rumours of the king’s splendour now raced across Beleriand, as many stated: “A Silmaril
of Feanor burns again in the woods of Doriath.” The rumor was to have devastating consequences
for the kingdom, which had barely survived the earlier sacking of Menegroth, as it drew upon the
king the ire invoked by the Oath of Feanor. While Lúthien bore the Nauglamír, it was not an issue,
for none among the Eldar nor the Naugrim were willing to assail such a beloved figure. However,
as word reached the surviving sons of Feanor of the renewal of Doriath and the pride of its
monarch, the seven came together once more after years of wandering and set upon a single course of
action - the recovery of their father’s masterwork from the resurgent Kingdom of Doriath at any cost.
The issue was initially raised somewhat amicably, at least by the standards of the descendants of
Feanor, as they sent messengers demanding the return of the Silmaril. However, in his pride,
Dior returned no answer, which provided the only pretext the warlike Celegorm required,
given the circumstances. Enraged to be rebuffed in such a manner, Celegorm riled up his brothers
to such an extent that they agreed upon his preferred course of action, a direct assault
on the kingdom, which now lay bereft of the protection afforded by the Girdle of Melian.
So began the Second Kinslaying. The assault was launched in the darkest depths of a harsh Winter.
The brothers fell upon Menegroth catching the defenders unaware,
with the element of surprise proving the deciding factor in this instance.
Cutting down the guardsmen, the great sons of Feanor fought with Dior within the Thousand Caves.
Dior displayed all of his father’s martial prowess combined with the gifts inherent within all of the
race of Eldar, making him a formidable foe even to the Sons of Feanor. He fought as one possessed
and struck down Celegorm with his own hand, with Curufin and Caranthir likewise finding their final
ends within the Thousand Caves. However, this supernatural effort to hold back the enraged Sons
of Feanor was unsustainable; at the conflict’s end, Dior and his beloved wife Nimloth lay slain.
The servants of Celegorm displayed the cruelty of their fallen master even in his absence and seized
Dior’s young sons and left them in the depths of the forest to starve. Having fulfilled his
Oath to a certain extent, Maedhros was somewhat freed from his father’s power over him. As such,
he repented in the face of his comrade’s actions and attempted to save the children. Long did he
search for them within the forest yet to no avail, and the fates of Eluréd and Elurín remain unknown.
Doriath was left a smouldering ruin, never to rise again. Yet even in their brutality and malice,
the Sons of Feanor could not attain what they had long sought. A number of the residents of Doriath,
Elwing among them, had survived the onslaught directed by Celegorm. With this small remnant
of Dior’s people went the Silmaril, and they soon arrived at the mouth of the River Sirion by sea.
With the fall of Doriath for good and all, only a single realm of great enough size
to prove a threat to the Dark Lord and his forces remained. Gondolin, hidden
within its great valley yet stood, with its very existence in such dark days, an act of defiance.
Yet Húrin’s actions had forever imperilled this mighty bastion of hope amidst an overwhelming tide
of despair, a tide which was soon to wash over the free peoples. However this is a tale for our
next video on the history of the First Age. The next few videos in this series will be dedicated
to the last desperate battles of this Age before the sundering of Beleriand in the War of Wrath,
but we are planning to cover the battles of many other fantasy, sci-fi, and space opera universes,
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